Le notti di Cabiria (1957) dir. Fellini, just great, saw it the whole way through on The Sundance Channel last night, before I had only seen the very beginning where Cabiria is pushed into the canal by her lover. 10/10

Logged

"When you feel that rope tighten on your neck you can feel the devil bite your ass"!

Le notti di Cabiria (1957) dir. Fellini, just great, saw it the whole way through on The Sundance Channel last night, before I had only seen the very beginning where Cabiria is pushed into the canal by her lover. 10/10

Joe, we are in complete agreement here. This is the only Fellini film I like, but he really hit it out of the park.

Logged

That's what you get, Drink, for not appreciating the genius of When You Read This Letter.

Watched part of Modern Times in Western Civ. today - techinically the whole thing, but about half of it was fast-forwarded for God knows what reason. What I saw in comprehensible format left me cold (to your pleas of mercy).

Ogro - 7/10 - A pretty cool Pontecorvo film that explores issues of terrorism and revolution as before, although it's a bit more focused on the day-to-day lives of the terrorist protagonists and their work - almost Day of the Jackal with explosives. Here, however, he seems to have cooled a bit on the idea of violent revolution, advocating the glacial pace of democratization and liberalism to reform the government (at least in this instance). The character interaction between Volonte and the other gentleman was a bit frosty, and the film certainly lacks the chilling immediacy of The Battle of Algiers, but it's still worth a look.

The Man From Laramie - 9/10 - The previous Mann Westerns I'd seen left me a bit cold, but this one was very nice. Great depth of character, which I really appreciated - particularly the hat trick of fine villains. Stewart is at his best and Crisp and Kennedy are equally strong. Nice cinematography, great score, lots of excellent set pieces - what's not to like?

Great depth of character, which I really appreciated - particularly the hat trick of fine villains. Stewart is at his best and Crisp and Kennedy are equally strong. Nice cinematography, great score, lots of excellent set pieces - what's not to like?

Uhhhh . . . the stupid plot?

Logged

That's what you get, Drink, for not appreciating the genius of When You Read This Letter.

After having wanted to see this for years, I couldn't help but see it as a bit of a letdown. There's one moment early in the film where it's rather obvious that a dummy double was used; later on in the film, when it proceeds towards tragedy, I sort of missed out on some of the motivations of some of the characters... Vladimír Körner, author of the script, says in an interview in the bonus section that he and František Vláčil (the director) had different concepts and it was a rather troubled journey to find a common ground, even though the director loved his idea from the begining. And a film historian, Pavel Taussig, says that Vláčil originally wasn't satisfied with Petr Čepek, the actor who plays the young hero of the story, at all - and I can see why, I had hard time getting used to his acting, and even though I could identify with the character's motives perfectly well, I couldn't identify with the character.

But as you can see from my rating, these are rather minor problems. Above all, I really liked Jan Kačer here (and I liked him as the 007 parody in Konec agenta W4C as well, so I'm beginning to think I might really like him in general...). He says in the interview that he spent about a month getting seriously prepared for his role of a fanatic knight of a military-monastic order, fasting and reading old books on the subject; and I think it shows... in his general attitude. He somehow manages to bring something sympathetic and human into the character that otherwise could have turned out as a very negative one. So I even found myself rooting for him rather than Čepek's hero... I wonder whether it was meant that way.

EDIT to add: Also, there's something a bit Leonesque in the way shots of landscape/whole rooms and shots of human faces alternate in it. It's not exactly the same thing, but no less impressive.Please, remind me of the proper terms for this.

« Last Edit: October 24, 2009, 07:12:57 AM by marmota-b »

Logged

There are two kinds of films in this world:those which stay,even when their genre is forgotten,and those which don't.

Doesn't the Stewart character turn out to be some kind of government agent? It just kicks the whole revenge angle in the head. And then the whole idea that ranchers would be running guns to the Indians--I always hate it when stories make characters operate contrary to interest.

Logged

That's what you get, Drink, for not appreciating the genius of When You Read This Letter.